Like all addicts, Central Planners are confident they can manage the monkey on
their back. But this is a self-serving illusion.

Addiction is many things, but beneath its complexities it is a self-destructive
expression of the desire to avoid or suppress pain. The pain might be physical or
the stuff of the mind, memories or inner demons or tortured misgivings about one's
choices, soul and life.

Though the self-destructive aspects of the addiction are painfully visible
to observers, to the addict they represent a solution: perhaps not the ideal one or
even a good one, but a solution nonetheless.

Fear plays a big part in many addictions--fear of life without the addictive salve.
The fear in an addict's eyes when the fix is not forthcoming is haunting to all who witness
it.

To the non-addicted observer, addictions are not successes; they are failures of one
kind or another, and those who care about the addict seek some way to extract the
addict from the grip of his/her addiction, and from the fear that often drives it.

I have recently been wondering if America is addicted to failure.
The oft-repeated definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over
again and expecting different results, generally attributed to Albert Einstein.

But given the right mix of blindness and fear, doing the same thing over and
over again and expecting different results might not be insanity but a
self-destructive addiction to failure.

In this light, please consider this chart of the broad-based U.S. stock market index,
the S&P 500, which I have marked up as an addiction to failure:

The source of this addiction is a fear of life without credit/asset bubbles.
Fearing life without the rush and high of asset bubbles, we see an addiction
to financial bubbles as a solution in the same terrible way a heroin addict
sees smack as a solution: not as a long-term solution or even a good one, but a solution
nonetheless, because it makes the pain of facing life without Central Planning
financial bubbles go away at least temporarily.

But bubbles inevitably leads to overdose and a subsequent self-destructive crash.
Our central bankers/planners have injected enough monetary heroin into the nation
to guarantee not just the rush and the high but the overdose that leads to a destructive
crash.

Like all addicts, Central Planners are confident they can manage the monkey on
their back. But this is a self-serving illusion; it's the monkey who controls the
addict, not the other way round.

If we're not addicted to failure, why do we tolerate a central bank that
creates one rush-high-overdose-crash after another? Perhaps it's time to confess
that we're addicted to failure because we're too afraid to face life without
this financial addiction.

Pretty sad, huh? Like all observers, those of us without monetary heroin in our veins
wonder when the poor addict will finally wake up and choose a path that isn't self-destructive.
But as many of us know from personal experience, it often takes a near-death experience
to awaken the instinct for survival in the addict. Sadly, sometimes not even that is enough,
and a once-great nation spirals down to ruin.

Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy(Kindle, $9.95)(print, $20)
Are you like me?
Ever since my first summer job decades ago, I've been chasing financial security.
Not win-the-lottery, Bill Gates riches (although it would be nice!), but simply
a feeling of financial control.
I want my financial worries to if not disappear at least be manageable and
comprehensible.

And like most of you, the way I've moved toward my goal has always hinged not just on
having a job but a career.

You don't have to be a financial blogger to know that "having a job"
and "having a career" do not mean the same thing today as they did when I first started
swinging a hammer for a paycheck.

Even the basic concept "getting a job" has changed so radically that
jobs--getting and keeping them, and the perceived lack of them--is
the number one financial topic among friends, family and for that matter,
complete strangers.

"I want to thank you for creating your book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a
Bewildering Economy. It is rare to find a person with a mind like yours, who can take
a holistic systems view of things without being captured by specific perspectives or
agendas. Your contribution to humanity is much appreciated."
Laura Y.

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